FBI Uniform Crime Reporting
The most widely used justification for the purchase of heavily armored war machines is that violence against police officers has increased exponentially, necessitating the tank and swat for the protection of the men and women who serve our communities. But examination of the FBI's annual Uniform Crime Report, a database that tracks the number of law enforcement officers killed and assaulted each year, reveals that this is simply not true. According to the UCR, since 2000 an average yearly toll of about 50 police officers have been feloniously killed, the highest reaching 70 in 2001. So the notion that militarization is a necessary reaction to a growth in violence against police officers is absurd, considering that violent crime is trending downward.
The Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program was conceived in 1929 by the International Association of Chiefs of Police to meet a need for reliable, uniform crime statistics for the nation. In 1930, the FBI was tasked with collecting, publishing, and archiving those statistics. Today, several annual statistical publications, such as the comprehensive Crime in the United States, are produced from data provided by nearly 17,000 law enforcement agencies across the United States.
Other annual publications, such as Hate Crime Statistics and Law Enforcement Officers Killed and Assaulted, address specialized facets of crime.
Special studies, reports, and monographs prepared using data mined from the UCR’s large database are published each year as well. In addition to these reports, information about the National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS), answers to general UCR questions, and answers to specific UCR questions are available on this site.
